Did Rice Lie to Press, 9/11 Commission, on Al Qaeda Knowledge?

[JABBS]

American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission and reported in today's newspapers.

A 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, a report prepared by intelligence officials, "highlighted the growing domestic threat of terrorist attack, including a risk to civil aviation," the commission found in a blacked-out portion of the report.

And in 1998 and 1999, the commission report said, the F.A.A.'s intelligence unit produced reports about the hijacking threat posed by Al Qaeda, "including the possibility that the terrorist group might try to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark."

The release of this information calls into question statements made by then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, in a 2002 press briefing and in her 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

The new information matches a previously known 1999 report, written for the National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies, that said: "Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House."

That report noted that an al Qaeda-linked terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had suggested such a suicide jetliner mission.

So, given the newly released information, and the earlier known information, there are only two conclusions that can be drawn:

1) Condoleeza Rice lied to the press and the 9/11 Commission.
2) Condoleeza Rice is the least-information, most out-of-the-loop National Security Advisor ever.

I honestly don't know which to believe. Don't forget, Rice was scheduled to give a speech on Sept. 11 regarding U.S. security. The speech, never presented, only mentioned terrorism in passing, and did not reference Al Qaeda.

***

Here are the relevant Rice quotes from 2002 and 2004. You make the call.

Q Why shouldn't this be seen as an intelligence failure, that you were unable to predict something happening here?

RICE: Steve, I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking.

-- Rice Press Briefing, May 10, 2002

RICE: To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.

I cannot tell you that there might not have been a report here or a report there that reached somebody in our midst.

...

All that I can tell you is that it was not in the August 6 memo, using planes as a weapon. And I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons. In fact, there were some reports done in '98 and '99. I was certainly not aware of them at the time that I spoke.

-- Rice testimony to 9/11 Commission, April 10, 2004

***

This article first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.

[acmejack]

1. Of course she did!

This administration has elevated mendacity to an art form.

[gademocrat7]

2. she could not tell the truth

she has no concept of the truth. Only the lies that shrub and rove want her to spin.

[sui generis]

3. like a freshly used hourly rate motel sheet

you know it

[woodsprite]

4. She's repub, cohort of *, and her lips were moving - no doubt she's lyin'

[JABBS]

5. No chance she was out of the loop?

How else to explain not mentioning Al Qaeda in her 9/11/01 speech?